


distraught

by kornevable



Series: unwavering will - roy week 2021 [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi | Fire Emblem: Binding Blade
Genre: Gen, Introspection, POV Outsider, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28759728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kornevable/pseuds/kornevable
Summary: Tam remembers him because he always speaks with a gentle voice and helps people in the village. He’s nice and looks extremely kind.There is this mister in Tam's village that's intriguing. / Day 4 of Roy Week: rest & pressure.
Series: unwavering will - roy week 2021 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103630
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	distraught

**Author's Note:**

> This... didn't go in the direction I originally wanted, but the idea is still here haha

“The mister in the house near the lake lives alone?”

Her mother looks up from the sewing work in her hands, confused.

“Which mister?”

“You know, the one with red hair and a headband who fishes sometimes. He brought us radish once.”

Tam remembers him because he always speaks with a gentle voice and helps people in the village. She saw him bringing medicine for Grandma Joelle several days in a row because she couldn’t get it herself, and he even fed the neighbors’ dog when they were taking too long to come back from a business trip in the nearby city. He’s nice and looks extremely kind.

“Oh, yes I think he lives alone,” her mother replies. “Why?”

“I was just asking,” Tam says with a shrug. “He’s been in the village for a while but I never saw anyone with him, so I was curious.”

“Don’t stick your nose into other people’s business, Tam.”

“I’m not! Like I said, just curious.”

She’s simply surprised that anyone would come willingly into her remote village when there is a bigger city one day away on horseback. They’re stuck between the sea and the mountains separating them from the Nabata desert, so honestly there is nothing much to do here except growing food and hunting.

Tam starts investigating. The mister likes going to the market and taking walks in the outskirts of the village. Well, she calls him mister but she doesn’t know his age—he looks like an adult but he’s not an adult like Uncle Rick, who loves drinking and talking and laughing while telling stories of his adventures as a soldier, with a thick and boisterous voice. There hasn’t been any major wars for decades, or so Tam is told; Elibe has been at peace for a while now.

Anyway. She tries to sneak around the lake and pretends to be looking for fish to get closer to the house, but the mister is already at the shore with a notebook in hand, sitting on a neatly cut tree trunk. She must have stepped on a branch or something because he hears her approaching and turns around to wave at her. Odd, because she made sure she was tiptoeing and walking on flat ground. Oh well.

“Hello,” the mister says with a smile. “Do you need something?”

“No, not really,” Tam mumbles. “Hello.”

The mister scribbles something in his notebook with a quill, too quickly for Tam to guess what. He closes it and puts them down next to the inkwell on the trunk. Tam doesn’t know anyone who would bring an inkwell outside, when accidents are easy to make.

“I think I’ve seen you around a lot, recently,” he says not unkindly. “I’m Roy. What’s your name?”

“Tam. What do you do all day? People in the village don’t know either, you’re kinda new.”

The mister—Roy—laughs, his eyes shining with the sort of amusement that adults try to hide when the children are being too rowdy. Tam isn’t a kid anymore (she’s a teenager!), but her mother keeps treating her like one.

“I came here to take a break from my travels. I keep a record of them in my journal,” Roy answers. “There is so much to see and to discover, if I don’t write it down I will forget.”

“You travel? Where and what for?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. I learn new things and help all the people I can.”

“Why?”

Roy fiddles with his headband, readjusting it.

“This is how I decided to live.” He then points behind him, to the road leading to the main gate. “Have you been to the city next to your village?”

Tam wrinkles her nose. “A few times, but I don’t like big crowds.”

Roy hums. “Yes, it can be overwhelming. There are even bigger cities in Lycia, like Ostia. There are countless shops lining the streets and a market place the size of two crossroads. Some people know their way perfectly in the city, but other people still get lost. It’s interesting to see how different people are from one place to another in the same country.”

Tam has never traveled farther than the vicinity of her village, so she can’t really picture what Roy is saying. If he’s seen so many different places, then it adds much more mystery to his reason of staying here.

“Isn’t the village boring for you, after all your adventures?” she wonders.

Roy smiles, patient. The crinkle around his eyes somehow makes him look older, like he’s reminiscing or was hit by nostalgia.

“It’s never boring to rest,” he replies. “Traveling requires energy, especially when you have a goal to achieve. It’s good to simply enjoy a moment of peace before hitting the road again.”

“So you’re going to leave soon? You’ve been here for a while now.”

“I believe I will depart soon, yes.”

“Where?”

Roy’s smile grows even more wistful. “I’m going to visit some old friends. Do you know where Pherae is?”

Tam digs into her memory and the history lessons she was given, furrowing her brow.

“It’s a big port city, right? One that was important during a war. I don’t know which one.”

She watches as Roy’s face morphs into something sad, almost regretful. She doesn’t know what she said wrong.

“Ah, so this is how Pherae is remembered for,” he whispers. “You are probably thinking about the conflict opposing people and dragons.”

Tam perks up immediately. “So they really exist? The dragons exist?”

She never saw one. She grew up with so many stories about dragons; ones that depict them as bloodthirsty beasts, ones where they destroy villages and steal their shiny treasures, and others where they help humans because they find them fascinating. Her mother, with some reservation, tells her that when she was young everyone used to think dragons were evil beings; but now there are people who say they’re not the mindless creatures they thought them to be. Tam doesn’t care—dragons are cool in every story.

Roy seems taken aback by her enthusiasm. He glances at his notebook, tries to reach for it, but withdraws his hand at the last second and forms a fist in his lap instead.

“They exist. Some places in Elibe now accept them without prejudice, but that wasn’t the case before. The war you’re mentioning was more of a city-scale battle in Pherae, where diverging opinions on the matter of coexistence got out of control.”

“Who won?”

Roy shakes his head. “No one. People grew tired of the fighting and they agreed on a truce. There were many injured, the last time I saw Pherae it was in shambles. I’m… actually going there to see if anything has changed.”

Tam frowns. Something doesn’t add up. She thought that there hasn’t been any wars in a long time, and this Pherae conflict sounds like it happened decades ago. If she was taught about it when she was a kid, then it means it was an important event in the past.

“You think people are still fighting? That conflict happened, what, twenty or thirty years ago?”

The laugh that rings in the air is devoid of joy. “You would be surprised by how little people change.”

Tam isn’t sure. She matured plenty in the last two years, her friend Liz stopped being a jerk, and her neighbors actually listen to her when she tells them things now.

“I do believe some change happened, but I realized we can’t force people to abandon their misconceptions when that’s all they’ve ever known,” Roy sighs. “Dragons and people aren’t so different, if they are willing to try understanding each other. It’s… it’s complicated.” Roy makes a vague gesture with his hand. “It’s probably boring for you to listen to my ramblings.”

“Well, I like dragons,” Tam announces, not knowing what else to say. “You seem to like dragons too.”

This time, the sharp laugh ripped off from Roy’s throat sounds more genuine, resembling a snort of amusement.

“Yes. Dragons are good people that don’t deserve this hatred.”

It’s strange, Tam thinks. Roy reminds her of the grandma and grandpa brewing medicine for everyone, living in the center of the village. They are kind and patient, never getting angry even when people say they are wrong and ignore their advice. Roy sounds… wise.

“How old are you?” she asks. “You’re living alone, so you must be an adult. But you don’t look that old.”

Roy trains his gaze on her—he observes her, tilting his head to the side, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Tam is struck by the thought that he’s laughing at her.

“I’m old enough to know that you’re not supposed to be sneaking off this late in the evening.”

Tam jumps on her feet and frantically looks around, realizing that the sun has dipped low in the sky.

“Don’t tell my mother I was here!” she pleads, already sprinting back towards her house.

Roy is shouting something at her, maybe about being careful and not tripping, but she’s too far away to hear him properly. She still has many questions, so she will definitely come back.

When she gets home, Tam thinks about Pherae. She opens a history book from her father’s collection and gleans what she can. She learns about its importance in trade, its role in protecting the border from Bern when there were threats of invasion a long time ago, and the long list of righteous and honest Marquesses that ruled over the territory. The only blight is that no one truly knows what happened to Marquess Elroy, after he stepped down and let his daughter take his place. The current Marquess is so far removed from him that he most likely doesn’t know the story of his ancestor either.

Tam flips the pages, keeps reading but she starts to doze off. She stops paying attention when her eyes gloss over the events of the Pheraen Conflict, occurring fifty years after Marquess Elroy’s daughter introduced a law punishing discrimination against dragons.

Tam hopes she can talk about this strange issue with Roy again.

**Author's Note:**

> :) Thanks for reading!
> 
> / [twitter](https://twitter.com/kornetable)


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